Posts Tagged ‘craft’

I didn’t have a chance to take photos of a gift I made for a friend recently, but she was kind enough to take a picture herself (and also include the little recipient enjoying it!). For this one I went with a slightly more neutral color palette, and used the same color yarn for the fur and his sweater stripe, then used gray and blue for the pants and other sweater stripe. I also wanted to dress him up a bit, so added some little suspenders, which turned out super cute! I thought about adding a bow-tie but never got around to it – I think I’ll have to try that for the next one 🙂 I also made a little rattle and felted on a little moon for fun – it was my first time felting and I really like the different texture it gives to the toys. How cute is his little face looking at the kitty?? Adorable.

Every time we use the last egg, I can’t bring myself to throw away the carton – they are just so useful! There are about a gazillion things you can do/make with them, so I always chuck them into my bin of “random packaging I might use for a craft”, which is embarrassingly large (old tuna can, anyone?). This past Sunday, though, I’d seen something on Pinterest (of course) that had given me an idea and I just happened to use the last egg that morning, so egg-crate-monsters it was!

Just cut them out in pairs, and decorate however you want to look like eyes – we did ours quickly with just marker, but you could totally glue googly eyes on these. Then we stuck in pipe cleaners to add crazy “lashes” and attached them to our fingers. Quick and oh-so-easy crafty fun.

Something I’ve discovered with some surprise is that, for a younger child, the appeal of putting beads onto a pipe cleaner Never. Gets. Old. Whenever I am at my whits end and can’t think of anything for them to do to save my life, I break out the pipe cleaners and beads. You can bend them into shapes (like the hearts below), use them to form letters and numbers, make bracelets, crowns… you name it, we’ve made it.

The beauty is that you can re-use all the supplies with a few un-twists of the pipe cleaners a few days later (they won’t miss them what with the HUNDREDS of pipe-cleaner bead thingies they’ve made) – it’s a self-replenishing craft!! For valentine’s we got a little more crafty than usual and attached them to some leftover lollipop sticks I had from a party and voila! Heart wands.

My 2 year old and 5 year old both enjoy doing this for what seems like hours, and the bonus is that it’s good for their little fine motor skills to put them on. I get to cook dinner AND feel good about their little brain development – win, win!

On my quest to find something non-candy to give out to my daughter’s preschool class for Valentine’s Day, I came across a TON of adorable ideas, but the heart crayons stuck out, not just because they’re cute and would be a fun project, but because we had a gigantic plastic bin full of broken crayons that I had no idea what to do with – problem solved! So I assembled the necessary tools:

…and set to work. First we peeled off all the paper – warning: this can take a while, luckily most of ours were already peeled, and my daughter oddly enjoys this, so she did most of the work. I have heard that if you soak them in water though, it’s much easier, so I’ll try that next time. Then we separated them into piles of similar colors, and then if they weren’t already small enough, we broke them a bit more to fit into the mold.

Then we stuck them in a 250 degree oven for about 15 minutes, let them cool, and popped them out. Done! One note though – some brands of crayon we had (the ones that were non-Crayola) did NOT want to melt, even after 25 minutes in the oven.

I had to end up mushing them up with a knife and sinking them into the other melted crayon, so for the 2nd batch I made sure to chop those up EXTRA small so they would at least sink in better, even if they didn’t melt.

Finally, I made some favor bag tops on card stock and stuck them on the top – totally cute, and Ally is especially excited that she gets to give everyone something she made. I’ll be doing this one again for sure – I’m already thinking about pumpkin shapes, christmas tree shapes, shamrock shapes… the possibilities are endless!